


Mage #24

by tonepoem



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: F/F, Parody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 11:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8284514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tonepoem/pseuds/tonepoem
Summary: Selana, dedicated meat shield, discovers she's falling for Mage #24.  The question is, can her infatuation survive a quest for a lost kitty?(No kitties were harmed in the making of this fic.  I make no promises about the spiders.)(Also, sorry I couldn't work in any THAC0 jokes.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Malkontent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malkontent/gifts).



In retrospect, Selana should have realized they were in trouble when she woke to Mage #24 calling into the dark passages of the Labyrinth of Teeth: "Here, kitty, kitty. Here, kitty, kitty."

Selana was always groggy after being patched up with healing spells, and she'd almost died in that last battle against trolls. More accurately, healing magic induced an almost post-orgasmic sense of floating pleasure. Nice, but not something you wanted to confess to your friendly neighborhood cleric.

Said cleric, Miria, was also the party leader on account of having the most experience with dungeon-delving. Miria had called a stop in this sheltered nook so she and the mage could recover their spells. Selana had taken first watch. Nothing had happened, and she'd eased asleep the moment her watch was over. She knew that if hostiles came through, she'd wake up soon enough.

Second watch had gone to the third member of the party, Mage #24, Jiane Ravenskull. Jiane had joined Selana and Miria after Mage #23 had gone down due to spell failure on a monster summons. (Note to self: avoid summoning devils on general principle.) Selana didn't quite trust her, but she hated to have her suspicions borne out. Why in the name of all the gods hadn't Jiane woken the party?

"Here, kitty, kitty," Jiane said again, her sultry voice so coaxing that Selana was almost tempted to crawl over and lay her head in Jiane's lap.

 _Stop that,_ Selana thought, not without regret. If nothing else, Jiane was the prettiest mage she'd ever met, with rippling black hair, piercing green eyes, and delicately upswept pointed ears. She even made bone jewelry look fashionable. ("It's for the stat bonuses, darling.") But they weren't in the Labyrinth of Teeth for shenanigans. They'd ventured here because of this miserable pet-retrieval quest they'd picked up at the nearest village.

"Find my Fluffy," the aged halfling woman had said. "I'd been trying to keep her inside because she was getting bullied by some of the neighborhood kids. She wandered out chasing a squirrel and I haven't seen her since." Selana had been of the opinion that some wandering gazebo 1 had probably chomped on Fluffy, but if Jiane had found it--

Suppressing a sigh, Selana levered herself up and made ready to unsheathe her longsword of flame tongue. Ten to one that some bored villain was using the kitty as bait. At least they had an old beer stein with continual light cast on it or the three of them would have been forced to skulk about with torches or lanterns. Miria had won it in a bet with a very drunk wizard. Selana's philosophy of very drunk wizards was to stay the hell away from them, but in this instance she had to concede the item's usefulness.

A plaintive mew came from the shadows far down the corridor.

"Don't," Jiane said in a low voice, "you'll scare it."

"How do you know that's really Fluffy and not some sick-minded spellcaster luring us closer?" Selana edged forward, grateful that she slept in her armor and didn't have to go through the tedious process of armoring up unassisted in a hurry; great way to get backstabbed. Sleeping in full plate was only made tolerable by the grace of talented arcane smiths. She listened for any signs of creatures more dangerous than a domestic cat.

The mew sounded even more plaintive this time.

"Let me deal with this," Jiane said urgently. "I'm good with animals." She was fingering one of her bone-charms as she said this. 

Morbidly, Selana wondered what squirrel had died to enhance Jiane's charisma. (It certainly wasn't her wisdom.) Squirrel? Cranium rat? Hell, for all she knew, those were blink dog bones. You'd think with the number of monsters she had slaughtered, she'd be better at applied anatomy.

Jiane raised her voice again. "Would you like something to eat, kitty, kitty?"

By now the racket had woken Miria. Selana could have hissed in frustration. They _needed_ the cleric to snatch every moment of sleep possible so she could, for instance, heal Selana if the next fight also proved almost fatal. On the other hand, she supposed Miria might be able to take advantage of the extra moments to bless them.

"Jiane," Miria said in her flattest voice, "did you just offer to feed us to a housecat?"

The look that Jiane shot the older woman was injured. "I was going to offer it a ration."

Selana was of the opinion that the rations were barely fit for human (her and Miria) or half-elven (Jiane) consumption. She doubted that a creature as fussy as a cat would be tempted. But either Jiane wasn't lying about being good with animals, or Fluffy was very hungry after being lost for three days. Selana was also of the opinion that if Fluffy wanted to be fed on time, Fluffy shouldn't have run away from its loving halfling owner. _We're doing this for the gold pieces and the experience,_ she reminded herself.

Miria sat up and reached for her holy symbol, a plaque painted with the Crowned Lily of She-Who-Blesses. "Give it a try," she said quietly, "but just in case..."

Jiane's idea of "ration" made Selana's mouth water. Where had the other woman sourced such delicious-smelling pemmican? Apparently Fluffy shared Selana's opinion, because the mew trailed off into a distinct purr. Fluffy padded into view.

"Unholy succubus kisses!" Selana said, her sword of flame tongue clearing its scabbard with a clang as she leapt to her feet. Not that she knew _anything_ about succubus kisses, of course, but that was a matter for another time.

Fluffy wasn't Fluffy. Or anyway, it wasn't the tame little housecat that the halfling woman had described as needing rescue from the terrifying monsters of the wilds. Fluffy was a young displacer beast. Its two telltale tentacles were only six inches long, and waved in almost friendly fashion from its shoulders.

"We'd better kill it," Selana said, resigned. Fluffy might be cute _now_ , but once it reached its adult growth, its predatory instincts would take over. Thank the gods that she wasn't the one who was going to be explaining to the nice halfling lady that Fluffy wasn't coming home. There was a reason Selana liked being a meat shield and not the party leader.

Fluffy sat down and began washing one of its paws.

Before either Miria or Selana could say anything, Jiane strode over to the displacer beast and began scratching it under the chin. Fluffy's purr reverberated in the passages. Fascinating: either it couldn't displace yet, or it was choosing not to. "Aww, look," Jiane said, "it's harmle--"

 _"Look out!"_ Miria shouted as an immense silhouette dropped down from the labyrinth's ceiling behind Jiane. Giant spider, judging by the size and the eight legs. Miria raised her arms and began an incantation.

Jiane, not entirely stupid, grabbed the displacer beast (displacer kitten?) under her arm and used dimension door to retreat. Selana was frankly impressed by Jiane's ability to cast the spell while encumbered. She and Fluffy reappeared behind one of the craggy projections adjacent to the nook. Fluffy yowled. "No, bad kitty! You don't want to eat those material components just now--"

Selana didn't have time to worry about the possibilities of a spell going wrong behind her. She charged. Her footsteps set off disturbing arrhythmic echoes in the labyrinth's depths; they sounded eerily like the chattering of monstrous teeth. Since she was already familiar with the phenomenon from earlier battles, to say nothing of the fact that stomping around in full armor wasn't exactly a recipe for stealth, she ignored it and instead swung from the hip once she had the spider in her sights.

A miss. Momentum carried the blade through an arc. She sidestepped, careful of her footing, and the spider's clacking mandibles missed her by a perilously narrow margin. Good thing, too. She remembered how Mage #10 had succumbed to spider poison before anyone could get to him.

Other many-legged shapes scuttled in the passage. Great, so there were more of them.

Now that she was close enough to see her target in the unwavering light cast by the beer stein, it didn't look like a giant spider. Or rather, it had eight legs and the silhouette was roughly the same, but she'd slain more than her share of giant spiders over the years, and none of them had quite looked like this one. For one, the main mass of its body resembled a brain, complete with crenellated gray folds and wrinkles. For another, giant spiders didn't have front legs that had _scimitars_ glued to their forelimbs. She kicked herself mentally for mistaking the glint of metal for that of chitin--but the viewing angle had been difficult, and who expected a _spider_ to wield swords?

Miria's chant rose to a climax, and warmth suffused the air as her prayer took effect. Meanwhile, Jiane pummeled the spider with magic missiles. Jiane was a great believer in magic missiles. This suited Selana fine. She would never forget how Mage #17 had barbecued himself casting fireball in the sewers; she and Miria had barely survived that particular encounter. There was far less chance of friendly fire with magic missile.

The spider recoiled, and the smell of burnt critter suffused the air. Selana was largely immune to noxious odors of all kinds. It came with the adventuring lifestyle. She took the opportunity to gut the spider with her sword, whose bright flames roared up around the unlucky spider. It collapsed in a satisfying charred heap.

 _I will never not love critical hits,_ Selana thought, on guard in case the rest of the spiders rushed her. Fortunately, however, they skittered away.

After she had scouted the perimeter to make sure nothing else was lurking out there, Selana returned to the others. Now Jiane and Miria were _both_ scritching the displacer kitten.

"Thanks so much for caring," Selana said.

"I knew you had the situation in hand," Jiane said in that smoky voice of hers.

 _Stop that,_ Selana told the fluttering in her loins, not very effectually.

Jiane smiled at her in a way that suggested that she knew exactly what effect she was having.

Miria reluctantly disentangled herself from Fluffy and strode over to examine the spider's burnt corpse. She kicked it over to get a good look at the less toasty side. "Brain spider," she said. "Good thing you scared the rest of them off."

"Brain spider, giant spider, spider spider, they all go splut if you hit them hard enough," Selana said.

Miria sighed. "Brain spiders are taxonomically distinct in that..."

Selana tuned her out. Miria could go on forever about boring details like that, not just the relevant parts about special attacks and movement rates. Selana had learned that the best way to deal with the lectures was to smile and nod at intervals. This kept Miria happy--keeping one's cleric happy was a high priority for any right-thinking fighter--and meant Selana could instead spend her time daydreaming about, for instance, what Jiane looked like under all those robes.

"Well," Jiane said with callous cheer, bringing Selana's attention back to matters at hand, "at least we have Fluffy. How hard can it be to get out of here?"

"Stop," Selana hissed, too late, "don't _jinx_ it." Really, a mage should know better than to tempt random encounters like that.

"No help for it now," Miria said. "Jiane, can you coax Fluffy to follow us?"

"Of course," Jiane said indignantly. "Fluffy's a _good_ kitty, right, Fluffy?"

Fluffy emitted a practically domesticated mew.

Selana had weapons-grade misgivings about Fluffy, but how could she be mean to the critter when Jiane was entranced by it? Even if she couldn't help but remember the fate of Mage #4, who had perished trying to take a gelatinous cube as her familiar. "Hello, kitty," she said in her coaxingest voice, and reached out to pet Fluffy.

Fluffy's tail fluffed out. Suddenly the displacer kitten appeared to be two feet to the left. Jiane looked very odd scritching an empty patch of air--except, from the resumed purring, Fluffy hadn't changed position at all.

" _Must_ you, Selana?" Miria said. "Do you want the reward or don't you?"

"I thought you were above avarice," Selana said, "unlike the rest of us."

"It's for the glory of my goddess."

"If you say so." Selana was disinclined to argue the point. Miria could go on at length about how the money was used to raise unlucky paladins from the dead and so on. Selana didn't really care what anyone else did with their share of the loot so long as she got hers, and Miria was, at least, scrupulous about that part.

"We'll backtrack the way we came," Miria said. "Selana, you take point."

"You got it," Selana said. "Meat shield reporting for duty."

Miria didn't smile, but then she'd never had much of a sense of humor.

They set off, footsteps setting off the disturbing echoes again. A chill wind carried the mixed rank smells of fungus, rotting corpses, and stagnant water to them. Distended shadows played across the walls.

The displacer kitten spooked at a sudden skittering, but it was nothing more than a rat fleeing their path.

" _Good_ kitty, kitty," Jiane said. "We won't let the mean rats hurt you."

Selana shot back a frankly disbelieving look. She doubted that any mere rat posed a threat to even a displacer kitten as young as this one. The melting regard that Jiane turned on Fluffy made Selana bristle. _Wonderful, and now I'm jealous of a_ displacer beast.

They had to dispose of a few minor inconveniences on the way out. Selana catalogued them automatically: two brown molds, a stray goblin--that one barely left anything but bones and a smear of ash behind, no loot worth speaking of--and half a zombie that looked like it had been waiting for someone to finish it off for the better part of a decade. Selana wasn't the sentimental sort, but the zombie was unexpectedly pitiable. Presumably whoever had raised it had long since departed. It had been neatly dismembered, and even its teeth were chipped and broken. Killing it took so little effort that she wouldn't have thought twice of it if not for the displacer kitten's terrified yowls.

"There now," Jiane said, "the bad zombie's gone. _Good_ kitty, kitty."

The good kitty, kitty chirruped at her and twined around her ankles. Like many mages, Jiane wore highly impractical footgear--sandals, of all things--and they revealed lovely ankles. Not that Selana was looking. She thought of how Mage #8 had recklessly pulled on boots that turned out to be boots of dancing. While the resulting cha-cha had been extremely entertaining, it hadn't helped Mage #8 survive the wandering owlbear that turned up shortly thereafter. Maybe sandals weren't such a horrible idea after all.

The entrance to the Labyrinth of Teeth was within sight. If Selana hadn't been tired, cranky, and (she had to admit to herself) increasingly horny, she would have caught her breath at the view, even if she'd seen it before, on the way in. The long-dead wizard who had raised the place out of the bones of the earth and refined its terrors with the aid of golems had either possessed an architect's sense of detail or had hired someone to do the design work for her. Two sculptures of dragons with their mouths gaping open flanked the entrance, and the light of the three moons glittered both on their painstakingly carved scales and the long, long teeth.

According to the local sage, the guardian sculptures had been safely disenchanted some decades ago. Nevertheless, Selana would never forget how Mage #12 had stepped on a pressure plate and activated an eagle-headed statue because he'd been too eager to get his hands on a wand lying on the floor. The statue's first blow had knocked his head clean off. To add insult to injury, when they'd gotten the wand identified, it had only been a lousy wand of protection from evil with a single charge left.

"Selana," Miria said sharply, "you're woolgathering."

"What? Sorry." And she was. Normally she did better than this. "Hang back and let me check whether there's anything nasty lurking out there."

No dragons out there besides the statues, always a bonus, but Selana was ambushed by something worse.

" _WHERE IS MY FLUFFY?_ " shrieked the old halfling woman, tackling Selana.

Selana lifted her sword in a hurry so the halfling didn't impale herself on it by accident, or light her gray hair on fire. "It's fine, Fluffy's f--"

The halfling flailed against Selana's chest with her arms. "FLUFFY!"

Selana was in no danger of injury, but she dropped the sword and caught the halfling's wrists, worried that she'd break her fists against Selana's breastplate. "Whoa there! I'm telling you, Fluffy's--"

"Here she is," Miria said, striding forward with Jiane and the displacer kitten in tow. "Now could you stop attacking my fighter?"

The halfling disentangled herself from Selana with some effort and ran sobbing toward the displacer kitten. Fluffy mewed happily and bounded toward the halfling, almost bowling her over. Its tentacles were waving excitedly.

"Well, there's a happy ending," Jiane said to Selana, and wiped a tear away from the corner of her eye. "I wonder if I could get one of my own..."

"No," Selana said firmly. "I realize that you're daft because all mages are daft, and that the halfling lady is just daft, period, but I'm not going to let you adopt a pet that's bound to eat you in a year's time."

Jiane dimpled at Selana while Miria discussed the collection of payment from the halfling, who had rather sensibly not brought her stash of gold with her. "Why, Selana," Jiane said, "I didn't realize you cared."

"I've seen a mage or two die," Selana said, deciding on tact at the last moment. "I try not to get attached to them in general. But--" Suddenly shy, she leaned in, wondering if Jiane would permit a kiss.

Jiane's lips met hers, warm and enthusiastic. When they disengaged, Jiane breathed into her ear, "I thought you'd _never_ make a move and that I was going to have to slip into your bedroll naked."

"That also sounds appealing," Selana murmured back, "but I hate the thought of you getting bruised on my armor."

"There's an easy solution to that, you know." Jiane's hand caressed Selana's neck through a gap in her gorget's lacings.

Miria's voice interrupted them. "Not out here, you two," she said. "Let's get back to the village so we can _get paid_ and then you can do whatever you want."

Selana grinned at Jiane. "The sooner we get there, the sooner we can _get laid_."

Jiane, Mage #24, and hopefully the last mage for a long time, grinned back.

**Author's Note:**

> 1: For the curious, the story of the gazebo, fell beast, can be found here:
> 
> http://www.dndadventure.com/html/articles/gaming_stories.html


End file.
